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Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
- Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
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Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
Vincent Massi > 06-22-2016, 10:20 PM
For about $16 US, I paid a computer shop to install Ubuntu on an 8 gig thumb drive.
It is not difficult. During start-up, I had to press F11 (This will vary on different computers) to get the option to boot off a thumb drive. A tiny Ubuntu icon appeared, and after ten seconds the entire program opened. A column of icons on the left made it easy to find my way around.
I did not have to sign onto any account, so I had to go to Outlook.com to get into my e-mail account. As with every new computer and/or operating system, I have to sign in to everything that ever required registration.
Folks, it is easy to do. -
RE: Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
The Rogue Tomato > 06-23-2016, 10:50 PM
It's very easy to do. I would have done it for free.
I prefer Kubuntu (or Mint), but I have Ubuntu and Kubuntu on thumb drives. -
RE: Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
Vincent Massi > 06-23-2016, 11:12 PM
Rogue, I'm glad that somebody besides me is interested in this stuff. I am not well-educated on Linux. Is there any way to save the programs I download with the thumb drive? They always disappear when I shut down. -
RE: Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
The Rogue Tomato > 06-24-2016, 02:39 AM
(06-23-2016, 11:12 PM)Vincent Massi Wrote: Rogue, I'm glad that somebody besides me is interested in this stuff. I am not well-educated on Linux. Is there any way to save the programs I download with the thumb drive? They always disappear when I shut down.
Yes, there is, but you have to set up the thumb drive to do that when you install Ubuntu on it. I don't know if there's a way to convert an existing Ubuntu thumb drive to do this, but I'll google it.
Here are instructions for setting up Ubuntu on a thumb drive yourself. It's really easy. Look near the bottom for information about setting up persistent storage on the thumb drive. These instructions are for a pretty old version of Ubuntu, but they work fine for the latest version. I know, because I used these instructions for the latest version, myself.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14912/cre...ash-drive/
Here's where you download the installer to make it all work. This is the latest installer, and it has some instructions on how to use it, but the instructions aren't quite as thorough as the link above. But it really is just a few points-and-clicks. Download the Ubuntu ISO, download this installer, run it, click a few things, and you're done.
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-u...-as-1-2-3/
I googled it -- and I don't see any way to convert your Ubuntu live USB thumb drive to have persistent storage if it wasn't created that way. -
RE: Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
praise_yeshua > 06-24-2016, 12:30 PM
Slax works good on a thumb drive. Very small and fast.
http://www.slax.org
It has its own install routine but is very easy to do. Just follow the instructions. I use to rescue PC that wouldn't boot and crack a password or two if someone can't get into their machine. You have to load module to do that but it natively supports mounting NTFS drives. Which most kernels do now.
I'm not particularly fond of Ubuntu. It does have the longest support. Mint is the best Ubuntu distribution. In my opinion. Mint has most of what you need for multimedia out of the box.
I still prefer Fedora but they have an absolutely horrible support matrix. I hate upgrading so often.
If you have the hardware to do it, then run either CentOS 6 or Oracle Linux 6 but its not for the faint of heart. You will learn Linux though....
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RE: Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
Vincent Massi > 06-24-2016, 03:17 PM
Well, I installed Ubuntu this morning. I have version 15.10 (Wiley Werewolf) and I'll start trying it out in a little while. -
RE: Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
The Rogue Tomato > 06-24-2016, 03:34 PM
(06-24-2016, 03:17 PM)Vincent Massi Wrote: Well, I installed Ubuntu this morning. I have version 15.10 (Wiley Werewolf) and I'll start trying it out in a little while.
I've got thumb drives with different versions of Linux, but I have Kubuntu 16.04 installed on my PC along with Windows 10 (dual-boot).
I prefer Kubuntu because I like the KDE desktop more than the Ubuntu "Unity" desktop. It takes longer for the KDE desktop to start up, but IMO, it's worth the wait.
Windows 10 starts up in just a few seconds on my PC because it's on an SSD. Kubuntu is on an actual hard drive, which isn't as fast. I assume that if I had Kubuntu on an SSD, it would start up just as fast as Windows 10. But I can't afford another SSD, so I won't find out anytime soon.
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RE: Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
praise_yeshua > 06-24-2016, 05:13 PM
Just a heads up with running any Operating System on a thumb drive....
Flash based media like you find in most USB thumb drives have a limited write capability of only a several thousand operations. Even if you get 10,000 write operations out of a USB thumb drive....it might not take long if the OS on the thumb drive is paging very often. I've known tech people that used USB thumb drives to boot storage with no local media.... that only got 6 months of constant usage before the flash media failed.
Just something to consider. I wouldn't store anything very important on them.
I knew a lady that went to a local college.......who lost all her work on a failed thumb drive. She just completely wore it out. -
RE: Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
The Rogue Tomato > 06-24-2016, 08:46 PM
(06-24-2016, 05:13 PM)praise_yeshua Wrote: Just a heads up with running any Operating System on a thumb drive....
Flash based media like you find in most USB thumb drives have a limited write capability of only a several thousand operation. Even if you get 10,000 write operation out of a USB thumb drive....it might not take long if the OS on the thumb drive is paging very often. I've known tech people that used USB thumb drives to boot storage with no local media that only got 6 months of constant usage before the flash media failed.
Just something to consider. I would store anything very important on them.
I knew a lady that went to a local college.......who lost all her work on a failed thumb drive. She just completely wore it out.
This is absolutely true. It's safer to get a cheap USB backup drive and use that. Plus you get a ton more storage. There are USB 1 TB hard drives on Amazon for about $55. 1 TB is a lot of storage for just a second OS, though, but if you partition it correctly, you can use most of it as an NTFS backup partition. Since both Windows and Linux can access NTFS, you can share the data between the two.
There's also a much smaller 60 GB USB SSD on Amazon for $42. Much less storage, obviously, but it's smaller than a hard drive and much more reliable than flash storage. -
RE: Ubuntu on a Thumb Drive
Vincent Massi > 06-25-2016, 01:16 PM
PY, that's a valuable point you made about thumb drives wearing out. They are designed for storage, not operating a computer.